The Country who Waited
by Albilibertea
Summary: The Doctor found a boy with emerald eyes and sandy blond hair in a field one day. (Mention of USUK)


**AN:** Hello! So, I've been into Doctor Who lately and OMG I'd die if I didn't do any crossover! I'm still new to the fandom, though, so if there are any mistakes, please know that I'm _so so_ sorry! Also, this is un-beta'd (I'm still in a hopeless search to look for a beta that can put up with my laziness and crazy schedule), sorry again!

Anyway, enjoy~

**Warning: **Feels, feels, feels a lot of feels, me ignoring Amy and Rory (sorry again! I_ love_ them but I just couldn't fit them into this) and my English ._.

* * *

**Doctor Who and Hetalia Crossover**

_The Country who Waited_

Once upon a time, in a freshly new land, the Time Lord in our story saw a little boy curling up under a tree like a bundle of green leaves with yellow straw sticking out on the top. With careful steps and gentle hand, he came close to the kid and nudged him a little on the shoulder.

'Hey there little one, what are you doing here?' The Doctor whispered, rocking back and forth a bit as he was really excited to see the first inhabitant of this land, but not wanting to scared the kid either. Slowly, the mop of hair stirred and an adorable face lifted up from the green coat and emerald eyes blinked, looking up at him but not actually seeing him at all. The kid rubbed his face and like consciousness had finally dawned on him, sat up abruptly, almost bumping to his head in the progress.

'Who are you? What do you want?' The kid shrieked in a high, bell-like tone of a child. Normally, the Doctor loved to hear that kind of pure voice very much, but that of this boy was laced with such fear and alarm that weren't supposed to be there at all and it made him wonder what had happened to the other. In fact, the kid's eyes were wide and full of apprehension but also fierceness. Children at his age shouldn't have a look like that. It belong to those who had lived too long in danger and no longer believed in a safe life or happy endings.

(Then again, the Doctor himself had never liked endings either, happy or not)

'It's fine. I don't want to hurt you.' He said tentatively, trying to sooth down the boy.

'Really?' The kid asked and he felt something inside him break at the relief and hope in his voice. Innocent emerald eyes bore right to his, as if trying to rummage through layers and layers of time in them, searching for something to ensure, to trust.

'Yes. In fact, I just got here minutes ago. You can call me the Doctor.' He smiled warmly, patting the boy head. 'Now why don't you tell me what is your name and why you are here all by yourself? Where is your family?'

A look of horror laced with sadness appeared on the kid's face and the Doctor listened in shock as he, Arthur, told him about how his brothers usually bullied him, how people hated him and how he was being chased every now and then. Such a tragic life for a soul that was still so young and pure. He mused, putting a hand up to clean dirt on the boy's cheek.

'Then do you want to run away with me?' The Doctor asked out of consciousness. It took a while to realize what he had just said but really he didn't care much. He was in need of a companion anyway.

'Run? Run where?' The kid asked, surprised.

'Every time, every where you want' He grinned. 'I have the best ship in the universe that can travel through time and space! I can take you out of here, to somewhere far, far away' He said enthusiastically, flailing his hands around for emphasis.

The boy's eyes widened at each words. He then nodded eagerly, and somehow the Doctor got the impression that it had been a long time since the boy last had such a happy smile like that on his face.

They parted for a while since the Doctor needed to get back to the TARDIS and brought it here when the kid said something about giving his fairies and elves a farewell. Smiling lightly, he walked (okay, maybe bounced a little) to the blue box, already thinking of where to take Arthur to.

It was then he looked at the data on the TARDIS that he knew he had made a stupid mistake.

The Doctor couldn't take Arthur with him.

Because the boy was a country.

* * *

He sat at the front door of the TARDIS, legs dangling down on the air. With a sad look on his face, he watched as the little boy he once knew and had let down pointed a sword at his mentor, claiming independence of his own. Hundred years had passed since that first day, he never came back, not that he had enough courage anyway. Arthur had waited, for a long time and what hurt him the most was that he was still waiting. Such a stubborn kid.

He wondered how did Arthur feel about him breaking the promise like that, but it was obvious that the kid changed. He was stronger, bigger and his tears ceased as he grew up everyday. The Doctor didn't know if he was happy about that or not.

He had had no choice, though. A country couldn't travel through time and space because of the risk of landing right on his/her land (self?) in the future, or worse, in the middle of its destruction. Beside, countries had duties to fulfill and people to live for. It was not as if they could just run away and everything would be left behind.

Then again, the Doctor never actually left at all. He was always there, at every states of Arthur's life. Because country or not, the kid was under his protection and even though he could never take the boy away, he could at least being an invisible voice in his head, or sometimes an imaginary friend.

There was certain disadvantages, of course. He couldn't talk to Arthur, couldn't show him directly that there was someone still cared for him. It hurt a lot, when Arthur was curling up and crying himself to sleep but all the Doctor could do was watched and hovered his hand above him. Never actually touched. Maybe he really was a coward after all.

And so, he stood behind and watched as time passed by and Arthur, or England, grew up with pain, sadly, more than actual happiness. But a miracle finally happened.

The Doctor observed in delight as one day Arthur found a little boy in a field. Somehow, he knew that that boy would make Arthur happy. And he smiled. Arthur had found someone to give his trust and love to, he could let go of the memory about the Doctor now. It made him glad and sad at the same time.

It was some years later that the Doctor was proved to have been wrong.

Alfred, also known as America - the boy whom Arthur found in the field, left. Just like a wind that blew through, leaving nothing but a trail of cold and emptiness. The Doctor knew it all along. That was why he hadn't left. The moment he was about to control the TARDIS to fly away, something tugged him back. A churning feeling inside his stomach, the low hum of the TARDIS, as if asking him to stay a bit more, changed his mind. He stayed. He kept an eye on their time together silently, trying to figure out what was worrying him. Arthur smiled and laughed more. He certainly was happier than the Doctor had ever seen.

But why did the feeling of unease still haunt him?

And then things went wrong.

He didn't know what had changed, but there was certainly something had. Even though neither Arthur or Alfred noticed anything, he knew. He just didn't know what would come with this change and if anyone would be happy about it.

Well, he had the answer now, when Arthur dropped his musket and sank to the muddy ground in the rain. He cried, cried for those better days that had been out of reach, cried for himself, cried to Alfred, mumbling desperate pleads for the other to come back.

But Alfred walked away, never looked back once. And at that very moment the Doctor just wanted to hug Arthur, his little boy, little country, close and murmured courage to his ear. He wanted to come to him, grab his hand and took him somewhere far, far away. Helped he run.

But he did none of those things. He couldn't interfere a country's lifetime because it would change history. So he – or rather, his hologram, since he was standing in the TARDIS, watching - just stayed still where it was, invisible and watched every shake of Arthur's shoulders, heard his silent tears and felt his pain spreading through the air, painting a dull colour to the scene that had already been so melancholy. It took a while for a certain sentence of Arthur's plead to reach his ears.

'Please come back, Alfred. What have I done wrong? Please...please...come back_...Doctor_.'

The word froze him and he felt as if an ice bullet had found its way through his two hearts. Arthur still remembered him. He still clung to the promise of a long time ago. He never forgot.

'Please, Doctor. Take me away. Haven't I waited enough? I just want to run...'

Arthur's pleads echoed in his head, shattered any thoughts and what was left was a dull, aching pain. The knowledge that Arthur was still waiting hurt and yet surprised him a great deal. It was touching and depressing. He didn't know what to do anymore.

Slowly, the Doctor let his hologram stepped forward and reached out a hand like he should have done a long time ago. His hand went through Arthur like a ghost but he didn't care, he just wanted to do something for this creature. Wrapping his arms around Arthur, he sang an old lullaby to the boy's ears, suddenly felt wetness on his own cheeks too.

Somehow he had a feeling that Arthur could feel his tears as well.

* * *

People said it would be sunny after the rain and everything would be fine again. However, the Doctor took the liberty to doubt that.

After that rainy day and months full of tears, he saw a twist in Arthur's life. A twist that was by no mean could convince him to leave even though Arthur had gone through his grieving state. No, the Arthur who stepped out of that state was not his Arthur. His little boy, little country was no where to be found now. Instead was a monster lurking behind that red coat and sickly sweet voice and gentleman-like manners. A monster that killed and robbed and destroyed as the Doctor desperately searching for something to make sure that his Arthur was still there, deep inside the monster in the name of an Empire that was now in possession of his body. And luckily, after some few nights of witnessing the crystal fell from those very eyes of the now-mighty Empire, he knew he hadn't lost Arthur forever.

Once again, the reel of time spun and he found himself watch in horror as the bomb raids happened every nights in Arthur's country. He could feel the ugly pain that was inflicted upon his little boy when the land was torn and damaged under countless explosions.

They said the heart of a country was his/her capital and the Doctor was soon confirmed about that fact when Arthur's cries of agony cut through the air like a neat tear in a fabric jammed right to his ears every night. And all he ever did was to swing his invisible arms around the boy and sing him songs that probably never could be heard. Thousand years and he still hadn't have enough courage to meet Arthur face-to-face again.

It wasn't help that this time Arthur didn't just wait for him, but also for Alfred. Their relationship had developed a bit through a previous World War and yet the other still refused to help Arthur in this Second. It made him angry. The boy had waited for him in a long time and now he had to wait for another one too. How could he be so annoyingly persistent? So stubborn, so blind, so...so...

Hopeful?

Arthur had clung to the Doctor's promise for years and now he also agreed to wait for the one who once betrayed him to come without any proper guarantee. After so many things that had happened, he couldn't understand why Arthur hadn't given up waiting, ever.

'Because you're a hero, aren't you Alfred? You'll come to save me.' Arthur mumbled one night during the Blitz, eyes closing tight - a way he did to reduce the pain, though the Doctor doubted the result was anywhere near sufficiency. 'You will come. Because I believe you, idiot. I know you will.' Arthur repeated those words in an endless chant, a single tear fell down his cheek.

Maybe Arthur wasn't just waiting for the Doctor or Alfred, but for the day he stopped waiting as well.

* * *

'Seriously, why do you keep inviting my people to travel with you?' Arthur asks as he pours the Doctor a cup of tea, though his voice is anything but annoyance. The Doctor smiles a little and just carries on gazing at Arthur without answering his question, not that Arthur expected him to anyway.

Hundred years has passed and the Doctor is genuinely surprised at how things has changed, how the world's number-one position reversed and so did people's hearts. He remembers feeling a fluttering sensation in his stomach when Alfred came back for Arthur one night when the Blitz was going on and everything seemed so hopeless, extending a hand to lead his little boy out from under the shadow. He smiled as days passed and wounds healed. He shed tears with Arthur when his Empire shattered but the boy himself didn't fall apart this time. Because Alfred was there to hold him together, more effective and real than the Doctor ever could through his hologram's ghost-like form.

He laughed at Arthur's usual quarrel with Francis and Alfred. He let his mouth hang open when Arthur returned Alfred's confession, never before realized that his boy had been in love for a long time. And some years later, he was rendered speechless when Arthur suddenly looked straight to his eyes one day and said 'Hello, Doctor.'

The Doctor had not known that he had come to meet Arthur for real, not by illusion. And yet Arthur was still indifferent when he saw him. It hurts a bit, really. His little boy just acts as if thousand years of waiting and him breaking the promise are nothing. He wants to ask why, but never venture to voice the question.

The Doctor and Arthur settles into a normal rhythm pretty quickly. He visits once in a while, popping up now and then in a world conference just to scare the hell out of other countries that had offended Arthur, to the other's pure amusement. Arthur never mentions the need to run away nor he ever offers him. But the curious feeling at the back of his head about the boy's indifference just refuses to lie still and now, sitting in Arthur's garden, it suddenly takes over his body.

'Did you wait for me after I had left?' The Doctor blurts out out of consciousness, unable to stop himself.

Arthur looks at him for a while with intense emerald eyes as he fidgets nervously in his chair like a little child waiting for being scolded. He isn't sure that he himself is really looking forward to the answer.

'I never waited.' A small smile tugs at Arthur's lips turns to a giggle when the Doctor look at him as if he had three heads.

'B...but you said...I heard! That day in the rain...' He mentally slaps his face for letting that information slip. And it soon turns to a desire to choke himself to death when he sees Arthur's face falls a little. Regardless of his new relationship with America, it's still a painful memory to recall.

'I said it on purpose.' Arthur says quietly after a while. 'I hoped that you'd hear my entreaty and touched by my current situation. Then you would stop hiding in the shadow and come out to take me away. Seemed like I was wrong.' He sighs, standing up to go inside to refill the teapot when the Doctor keeps sitting there, trying to comprehend what he has just heard.

So Arthur is aware of the fact that his race as a country does not allow him to run away all this time? If that time in the Revolutionary War was just his desperate attempt to go against the rule of nature in a midst of agony, it means...

'I know.' Arthur stops midway through the door, turning his head a little. 'You didn't break the promise. You came back. Throughout my life, you have always been there. I always can feel your touch through the hologram. I understand it all, don't worry.' He looks back with a smile. 'I'm the Kingdom of Magic, after all. Don't forget that next time you wants to hide in the TARDIS and stalk me through a clone.'

With that, Arthur steps inside and once again the Doctor are rendered speechless.

So…Arthur never has to wait for him. Does that mean the Doctor can't call him 'The boy who waited' anymore? Nah, he still had to wait for Alfred nonetheless. That counts too!

'Well...It seems the boy who waited, waits no more.' He mumbled to himself, pleased.

Now then the Doctor finally doesn't have to worry about being chided by his companions for breaking the promise to their own nation anymore.

**End?**

**AN: **Ehm I think it's a little rush at the end but I hope you guys enjoy it nonetheless. I just love Doctor and England so much~~~ Reviews would be nice :3


End file.
